Hot off the release of the second season of What If…?, Marvel is hoping they can win fans back with the upcoming Echo, which just dropped a new Kingpin-focused trailer that may confirm that the Netflix Marvel shows are canon.
Echo, which stars Alaqua Cox as the titular character, is set to be something different for the MCU – or, at least, different since the shows on Netflix were canceled after the Disney/Netflix partnership broke up. Rated TV-MA, the series looks to be strikingly adult, and this is only confirmed by this trailer, which is full of blood, violence, and Kingpin doing Kingpin things. More striking is that the first section of the trailer is taken from Netflix’s Daredevil series, confirming that at least those scenes are considered canon, meaning Daredevil is part of the MCU’s “sacred timeline” and not one of the many timelines revealed in Loki.
In fact, as the trailer proudly proclaims that Kingpin is back, this makes his previous return in Hawkeye feel like the series that was in another dimension. In that show, which introduced Echo, we say a very different, more comical, and far more PG-13 version of Kingpin. A version almost no one liked. Marvel appears to have taken the hint and reverted back to Vincent D’Onofrio’s original take on the character from the Netflix series. It makes sense as it’s struggling to bring fans into this next phase of content, and touting Echo as an ultra-violent, adult-focussed, canon-adjacent story definitely sets it apart from the rest of the fare.
For those who are looking for even more possible confirmation that Daredevil and the rest of the Netflix shows are canon, Screen Rant recently got a quote from Echo‘s executive producer, Brad Winderbaum, who believes the shows are canon.
“I can say that up until this point, we’ve been a little bit cagey about what’s Sacred Timeline, what’s not Sacred Timeline,” he said. “That was born of, frankly, a period at the studio where we were like, ‘We have to stick the landing with the vendors.’ It was another part of the company developing the Netflix stuff. We were aware of what they were doing, they were aware of what we were doing, but there was a lot to balance anyway,” he said. The producer continued, “But now that some time has passed; now that we see actually how well integrated the stories are, I think that I personally, Brad Winderbaum, would be confident in saying it is part of the Sacred Timeline.”
Echo will drop all its episodes on January 9.
